ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the information that was gathered from a variety of sources: from Centre files, from Centre staff and from local authority social workers and probation officers who were interviewed regularly during the follow-up studies. Where necessary to clarify or to complete missing evidence, the young people were interviewed as were their parents, siblings and other relatives or professionals. Evidence from police and criminal records and special secure psychiatric hospital registers was also collated. Initially, cases were separated into young men and women and then again into those sentenced as grave offenders and those in state care. Because of the complexity of young people’s situations, these distinctions later prove to be somewhat unhelpful but they serve to show how the analysis built up. The findings on care and placement histories illustrate again the dangers of generalising about disturbed and problematic adolescents in specialist residential care establishments.
